Can I Trust You Anymore?
by sbrianson
Summary: When suspicion breeds mistrust, Sirius doubts that Remus is the same person he fell in love with. Slash.


"Can I Trust You Anymore…?"

Pairing: Sirius Black / Remus Lupin

Rating: "M" – for language, slash and descriptions of homosexual sex acts

DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional – that's F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It never happened, and is not real. It is the product of my own imagination. It contains descriptions of male slash (that's male/male homosexual relations). If you do not like this type of content, or if you find homosexuality or its practice offensive, please click the "Back" button or close your Internet browser NOW, and do not read any further. All characters and copyrights are owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers™ (AOL Time Warner), but this story is owned by me and is all my own work.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES: 

This fic is based on a drawing I found earlier. Called "Moony And Pads" and drawn by Rave, I believe. It can be found at www dot dombillijah dot com slash rave slash art slash moonypads dot jpg

"Miss Williams", the landlady, is a character entirely of my own invention.

In the fourth paragraph, reference is made to a health warning found on some tobacco products in the UK - "Smoking can cause a slow and painful death". That one is my favourite (although it does not, unfortunately, stop me from indulging!)

Rhys is an old, Welsh first name. Pronounced "(h)Ree-ss" and often shortened to Ry (pronounced (h)Ree), it is very much a boy's name.

* * *

It's cold outside tonight. I pull the collar of my black leather jacket to shield my face from the wind as I light the cigarette in my mouth. I always hated using those damn muggle cigarette lighters – they refuse to light in even the slightest of breezes, it takes _so_ much practice to master the skill of getting one to light in the first place, and when you've finally done that, it runs out of bloody gas and you have to go and buy a new one! And all because we can't use our wands around here, just in case Miss Williams sees them and has a coronary. Still, they beat matches. 

Finally the little stick of paper-wrapped tobacco ignites – on the fourth fucking attempt, might I add – and I take in a deep lungful of blue-grey smoke. That's _much_ better. You'd wonder why I have to sit out here on this icy cold bench, freezing my nuts off, just to have a smoke – even though I rent my own flat

(_sorry, _our_ own flat_)

across the road. Two words for you. Miss fucking Williams. Sorry, that was three words. Oh, well. Her and her fucking rules. No smoking in the flat. No pets in the flat. No bringing girls round the flat… need I go on? I nearly laughed out loud when she said that – as if I would want to bring a girl around. But _he_ stopped me. After all, that cost us our last home, when our last landlady found out that we were sleeping together. Fucking bigots, but what can you do, eh?

(_it's not right, I tell you!_

_oh, be quiet, Sirius_

_be quiet yourself…_)

Another deep lungful of tobacco smoke. Ahh, that's better! Oops, sorry – it's a filthy habit. Don't try it – it causes a slow and painful death, don't you know? As if that's gonna stop me! I know _dozens_ of ways by which you can die one of those! Anyway. Ahh, this was bliss! A stolen five minutes out of the flat, on my own, away from –

"Si?" calls out a voice, from the distance four feet away. Fuck. Just the person I came out here to avoid in the first place. Luckily, I'm wearing my motorbike stuff, the black leather trousers and jacket, and the big, black clunky boots. I try and fade into the darkness of the night sky overhead, but _he_ is too clever for me. Or rather I am too stupid for _him_ – I'm wearing that white T-shirt with the Union Flag on the chest that I got the other week, and it radiates out 'Coo-ee! I'm over he-ere!' vibes straight towards him. He spots me, and crosses the road towards the bench. The smoking bench. "_There_ you are!" he says, and sits down next to me.

"Remus."

"You didn't tell me you were coming outside. You should have told me, I would have come with you."

"Sorry. I only came out for a quick fag."

"Evidently." he says, nodding curtly at the brown and white stick in my hand.

"Want one?" I ask, holding out the packet, knowing that he will refuse.

"Nah, thanks. I've got my own here" is the reply as Remus fumbles around in his jacket pockets and eventually pulls out an identical cigarette packet. I'm used to that now; we stopped sharing each other's cigarettes two weeks ago. But each refusal still hurts me – like, what does he think I've _done_ to them? Poisoned them? God knows!

Remus starts smoking his own fag, and I notice that he sits a little apart from me, his face turned away from my own. He _never_ used to do that, either. Back when we first lived together, we couldn't stop pawing at each other, we were inseparable. 'Dogs on heat', James and Lily joked. How far from the truth could things be now, then, eh?

"Did you have a good day at work today, Re?" I ask him, desperate for _some_ sort of conversation between us. Hoping that maybe he will snap out of this and we can go back to being Remus and Sirius, lovers.

"Not bad," he says gruffly, and I already know that the walls have gone up and I will never be able to peek through them tonight

(_re and si, flatmates_)

and I have no hope at all of catching even a small glimpse of the _real_ Remus Lupin…

The Remus I fell in love with…

"Was it busy in the library, then?"

"Why?"

"I just thought I would ask you how your day went. I'm interested, that's all."

"Why are you so interested in my job, all of a sudden?" he barks, instantly going on the defensive.

"Sorry, I was just showing an interest. That's what partners do, isn't it?"

"S'pose so."

"So was it?"

"What?" which goes to show that he's not really listening to me.

"Busy? The library?"

"Oh, yeah. Rushed off my feet all day!" But I know that he's lying. The library was like a cemetery, and he never went to work at all. I should know, because I followed him.

"Ah." I throw my now finished cigarette butt onto the floor and vanquish its lazy attempts to stay alive with the mighty power of my boot. I trample it into the ground for much longer than strictly necessary, because it lets me avoid looking at his face.

I get up, slowly, from the bench and start to walk away.

"Where are you going in such a hurry, then?" he demands immediately. Oops! Busted!

"Just going back inside, it's bloody freezing." I tell him, hoping that it sounds jovial and not

(_fearful, suspicious – panicky?_)

on the defensive. I fail. Spectacularly. He grabs hold of my jacket sleeve gently, near the elbow, and looks at me. Right into my eyes. I try not to wince as I see the soft, warming amber glow of his stare pierce through my skull, so cold and uninviting.

"I'm nearly finished. Won't you wait two minutes for me?"

"Okay," I reply, hoping he didn't notice how I tensed up when he grabbed me like that

(_i remember a time when you _liked_ Remus grabbing you like that when you _loved_ it because that would lead to _fun_ lots of good clean _fun_ oh wait a minute not so clean now you come to mention it hahaha_)

as I sit back down on the bench. We sit in silence as he smokes and looks away and smokes some more. I'm cold, and nervous, and I don't want to be here right now and so I pull out another cigarette and light it. At the sound of the lighter sparking he turns his head round suddenly.

"I thought you were cold."

"I am. I'm having a fag to warm me up."

"I thought you were just waiting for me to finish mine, then we were going back indoors."

"I fancied another one. That's not illegal or anything, is it?"

"But-" he sighs and stubs out his own dwindling fag butt. "Never mind." is barely audible. And so I sit there and smoke and look away, and he sits there and doesn't smoke and looks away.

"I heard that Lily took little Harry to see the Healer today," I offer to the silent wall between us, not being able to stand the quiet any longer.

"Why? What's wrong with little Harry?" he demands.

"Dunno. Think he was playing with James's wand or something like that."

"Oh, dear."

"Yeah," I say. And he remains silent, so I say "Oh dear", just for something to say. This feels so wrong. We never had to make small talk before. Not since our first journey on the Hogwarts Express. It just feels so fucking

(_weird, strange – not _right…)

wrong.

"When are they going into hiding?" he asks, his question neutral but his tone dark.

"Tomorrow. Dumbledore is coming round to perform the Fidelius Charm.

"Really…" he trails off. My subconscious is screaming at me like an alarm that _this is not right_, this is _suspicious_, but I try and fight it off. I try desperately to put all thoughts of Remus being a spy, a double agent, for You-Know-Who from my mind. One again, I fail miserably at the task.

"Who is their Secret Keeper, then?" he asks, his voice clipped and almost harsh. This only serves to set off more alarm bells in my head. "I suppose James decided that it would be you?" I cannot believe that he would ask me that. I cannot believe that he would have any reason to know who the Secret Keeper was, because he is _not _You-Know-Who's spy. He _can't_ be!

(_who are you trying to convince? Yourself? Hmmm…?_)

"Yes," I reply. But it is a lie. They are using Pete. Albeit my idea, I convinced Lily and James that I was too much an obvious target. But in reality, it was because I didn't want Remus to know who the Secret Keeper was

(_because you can't shake off that nasty little feeling that he's the one he's the one who's gonna betray Jim and Lils can ya?_)

and his only reply is a neutral grunt. Something has changed between us

(_he won't talk to you he won't say anything to you because he doesn't want to give anything away_)

something I cannot put a finger on, but it's there all right.

(_he doesn't trust you he doesn't trust you he doesn't trust you any more_)

I finish my cigarette and we walk slowly back to the flat in stony silence.

"Well, I think I'm going to turn in, have an early night," he announces as we reach the living room. Nice try, Remus, but I know what your game is.

"Hmm, sounds good," I say back. "You know, I could probably do with an early night myself. I'll come and join you." And I see a little flicker of bitter disappointment in his eyes. He was hoping to get away from me, but I know better. I'm always one step ahead of him.

"Sounds fun!" He winks at me. "Your place or mine?" He is, of course, referring to my bedroom or his bedroom. I know, I know. We live together as lovers, but we have separate bedrooms. This is to _Keep Up Appearances_. You see, we have to maintain the pretence that we are just friends, just flatmates, or Miss Williams will get pissed off and chuck us out. Just like our last landlady when she found out about certain… _goings-on_. And the scheming little tart is always popping in for 'surprise inspections', otherwise known as her little way of finding the slightest excuse to get rid of us. That's why we have to do so much the muggle way, and why we have to call ourselves 'Si' (for Simon) and 'Re' (for Rhys), in case she hears us call each other by our proper, wizarding names. I mean, this _is_ 1982, after all! If the wizarding world can get over such tripe as racism and homophobia, why can't the bloody muggles do the same? Come _on_, people! It's not exactly _difficult_, is it?

"Mine," I say. If things turn ugly, I want to be in more familiar surroundings if I need to escape. We enter the bedroom with its plain, discoloured wallpaper and solitary single bed. We kiss, and with a mouth as dry as a ball of cotton, I think I convince him that I really _do_ want to have sex with him, and my clothes end up in a pile on the floor next to his. He has made sure that our wands are out of the way. Within easy reach of him should he need to use his, but so I would have to noticeably stretch to retrieve mine.

And as we go through the motions, I find myself not bucking and moaning out his name in pleasure, but lying back and thinking of England, feeling dirty and cheap and used. Because although he thinks that he is having sex with me for my benefit, keeping up appearances, that's not actually true. He's doing this for his own benefit. 'Cause if he goes ahead and fucks me, like everything's normal, then he thinks that I won't suspect him. He thinks I won't figure out what he's up to. He thinks that he's smarter than me, but it is actually I who is cleverer than him! I think that this is what some people refer to as 'calling one's bluff'. But back to the here and now, he is behind me, fucking me, while instead of pleasure all I feel is bitterness and pain. He looks straight at me, his eyes bore into mine although he can barely see; his eyes are screwed almost shut with exertion. And I realise that the fact my cock is just flopping around limply, not excited, not willing and ready, has _not_ gone unnoticed

(_what's wrong padfoot dontcha wanna play no more?_)

and my gut instinct tells me that I should do something, _anything_, to look as if it's just the same as always. So I do something that I have never done before. Something I've never _needed_ to do before.

I fake it.

And once the whole now-sordid affair is done with, he rolls off me with a contented sigh. I retrieve my wand from the pile of clothes on the floor, point it at the soiled bedding and mutter "_scourgefy_". He turns away from me and lies back on the bed, on the side closest to getting out. Acting on autopilot now, lest he think that anything is wrong, I mutter my goodnights, the same words we have spoken to each other every night since we moved in together, where we didn't have to creep back to our own beds behind curtains to avoid detection like we did back in school.

"Goodnight, Moony."

"Goodnight, Padfoot."

"See you in the morning."

"Just as soon as you wake up." But as I hear his breathing deepen, I lie awake and wonder to myself, 'Will I?'

Or was that just another bitter lie?


End file.
